Beyond the Mirror
Copyright© 2012/2014
Chapter 24
As the group was about to enter the restaurant that evening, Alvin approached Tom.
“Boss, I hope you don’t mind, but Arnie and I invited a friend to drop in on us for a meal,” he said apologetically. “We’ll pick up the extra cost, okay?”
“Oh, don’t be an ass!” Tom snorted. “I’ll pay for the meal, and you two can save your money because if you want to build a cabin up on the lease, you’re going to need it.”
“Well, that’s sort of the other thing, Boss,” Arnie joined in. “You see, we want you to meet our friend, who just happens to be a wizard with a bulldozer or backhoe and is just as good with a handsaw or clawhammer. We got to talking and thought Sami would fit right in when we’re all up on the lease.”
“Ah, reading my mind about jobs I need to fill, are you?” Tom grinned. “By the way, are you talking about someone who was in the forces?”
“Yep, Lieutenant Sami Martin, a former US Marine, a Seabee, who was injured in Afghanistan and moved to Canada as a landed immigrant, but Sami is unemployed at the moment. That’s not a problem, money-wise, but it’ll soon be a pain in the butt for the lieutenant because the government bureaucrats keep an eye on that sort of detail. Immigrants pretty well have to have steady jobs or else a sponsorship, just to maintain their immigration status. Alvin and I would do the sponsorship thing, but we haven’t been working for you for long enough, and you know how government officials are about those sorts of details.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to your buddy and see if I’m as impressed as you seem to be, but I’m not quite ready to do much building or soil moving up at the lease. Of course, once spring breaks, I’m going to need someone up at the lease, and JJ will need someone down at Bear Springs, so both of us will need a worker like your friend. It’s still too early in the year for us to tackle either job, though.”
“Well, the thing is, the three of us talked it over, and we thought we’d go together to build a cabin. The lieutenant was raised in the hills of Tennessee and went from living in a log cabin in the backwoods into the Seabees, so being in the wild is no problem for Sami.” Alvin said as he held the door open for everyone to enter the restaurant. “We figure we’d get started on building a place as soon as possible. We already kind of picked out a spot that we thought would suit us and might be an advantage to you as well. It’s on the side of a hill and gives a view of the trail that Johnny Bowman was telling us leads out toward Misery Flats. Since folks have heard about you finding gold up there, we figured you might need somebody in that area to act as gatekeepers or whatever you’d like to call it.”
“Is this place still on the lease?” Tom asked as he held Sandy’s chair for her to sit down at the table they’d been shown.
“Yep, and besides that, there looks like there might be a bit of colour in the area, so we might be setting up your second mining claim there.” Arnie grinned as he took a small pebble out of his pocket and handed it to Tom. “When we were up there, Johnny took us for a ride on the snowmobiles and pointed out some quartz in that area. If you look close, you can see a tiny bit of colour on this chunk I chipped off a ledge at the back of the little clearing where we were thinking of building.”
“Johnny noticed that?”
“Actually, I think he said April was the one who saw it when they were out on the trap line.” Alvin shrugged.
Just then, a waitress came to their table and handed out menus. Tom took his, but as he glanced up at her, he paused, then smiled.
“Linda?” he asked.
“Why, yes, that is my name, but should I know you?” she frowned. “Your voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place your face.”
“Imagine him without the beard, or else with a full beard, depending on when you knew him,” Sandy said with a chuckle.
“Ohmigawd, you’re Tom, Tom Dunn.” Linda said, sounding astonished. “I haven’t seen you in what, two years? It was in the parking lot of a trail you took to throw off those creeps who were following you, and I know that worked out. I thought you said you were going to keep my family posted on your whereabouts? What in heck are you doing here in Sidney?”
“Well, I did call Dave, and I wrote him a couple of times,” Tom shrugged. “The last letter came back marked ‘address unknown,’ though. We’re just down here visiting folks in Victoria and taking a break from the snow in Bear Creek.”
“Well, Dave got his degree, then took a job in Alberta, and Dad had a heart attack that partially paralysed him, so we sold the farm, and we moved out here. I did manage to finish my teaching degree, but I was gang-raped while under the influence of a date-rape drug and got pregnant, so I have a son. Unfortunately, grade school teachers are a dime a dozen here on the Island, so I’m working as a waitress, and Mom is looking after my baby whenever I’m working. Anyway, the boss is watching, and I’ve got other customers, but my shift ends in an hour. If you’re still here, I’ll talk to you then, okay?” she had been smiling, but then frowned slightly. “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to mention that the beef steaks are all Alberta Angus, and the chef does a great job of grilling them however you like them cooked. Right now, though, I should take your drink orders.”
Linda took their drink orders, but just as she had stepped out of hearing range, Sandy leaned over toward Tom.
“Is that one of your ex-girlfriends?” she whispered.
“Well, I guess to some extent, but it was casual. We weren’t really close or anything.”
“You did have sex though, didn’t you?” Sandy whispered again.
“Yeah, we did, a few times, but we were never a serious couple in any way. Why do you ask?”
“Because she trusts you and virtually laid her life out like a book for you to see, but as well as that, she wants to talk to you again. Not many women would admit to a man that she’d been raped or would raise a kid who was a result of that rape. I think there’s a lot more to that story than we’ve heard.”
Sandy might have said more, and Tom might have responded, but Linda was already headed back to the table with their drink order. She quickly distributed the drinks, but paused as she served Tom and Sandy.
“That’s a lovely ring, Miss. Are you Tom’s intended?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, I am, Linda. My name is Sandy,” Sandy offered her hand to shake. “Tom and I plan to be married very soon.”
“Good, hold onto him, because he’s one of a kind and one of the few men in the world that I’d even think of trusting. I screwed up and let him slip away, so don’t make the same mistake that I did,” she barely touched Sandy’s hand with hers, then turned and quickly walked away.
“Oh shit,” Sandy said, watching as Linda hurried toward the washroom. “Excuse me, but I think she needs a shoulder to cry on.”
“I think I’ll tag along,” Liz announced, then joined Sandy as they got to their feet and followed Linda.
“Oh friggin’ hell!” Tom snapped as he stared at the other guys, especially Russ. “Do you have any ideas of what I can do, because this time I’m lost?”
“I don’t think there’s much you can do, Boss,” Russ shook his head. “I think you should let the women handle this one.”
“Yeah, and if they do something I don’t like, then what?”
“Then you do what all married men do, you grin and bear it,” Russ grinned.
“It’s kinda nice to know that you’re human and don’t have all the answers to all the questions,” Arnie winked at him. “Like Russ said though, let Liz and Sandy handle this one, because it’s out of your hands.”
“Yep,” Alvin said and was just nodding his head in agreement when his cellphone rang.
He got to his feet and moved away before answering it though, then Tom’s phone rang.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hi, Tom, it’s Art. Those bastards waited until I was done work today, then fired me, so I didn’t have to quit and we can move now, not in two weeks. Josie says we can be packed and ready to move in two days, so we were thinking of renting a U-Haul and moving ourselves to save you some money.”
“Bullshit!” Tom snapped. “Josie is six months pregnant and she doesn’t need all that work on top of everything else, but neither do you. Just pack up enough clothing and personal belongings in your car, enough to survive for a week or so and we’ll arrange for a mover. You might want to pack any family treasures and important papers as well, but you’ll have to move those with you because most movers don’t like handling things they haven’t packed. I’ll call a mover and have him there in a day or two, then they can handle all the heavy packing and moving, so all you have to do is drive to Bear Creek. Hell for that matter I’ve leased a Learjet for the next month, and I could fly you there if you don’t have a car that can make the trip right now.”
The resulting discussion lasted for several minutes, but Art and Josie finally agreed to let Tom hire a mover. They did want to talk to him and Sandy again before they moved to Bear Creek though, so Tom arranged to have them come over to the motel where he and Sandy were staying that evening. He’d hardly gotten off the phone when Liz and Sandy came back to the table and Linda went back into the kitchen and service area of the restaurant.
“Is Linda okay?” he asked as soon as Sandy approached.
“She will be, but you may not be happy with me. In fact, you might be annoyed with me. She hates working here serving people food and wants to work with kids. She’s got her teacher’s certificate, but she can’t find a job as a teacher, so I hired her. I want to see if she can work with Josie in the daycare,” Sandy said in a rush. “There’s a lot more to my decision than that, but some of it is really Linda’s business. Let’s just say that she saw you and it brought back a lot of memories.”
“Hey, we parted as good friends. At least I thought we did, so why did my leaving upset her so much?”
“Oh, it wasn’t you that caused the problems,” Sandy sighed. “She missed you a lot when you were gone. Because I got the impression that you became very close friends toward the last. Anyway, you left town and soon afterward her life seemed to fall apart around her. So she has this weird idea that you were almost like a good luck charm. I don’t understand just what she was saying, because she was bawling pretty good at that point, but it sounded almost as if she wanted to go along with you or something.”
“Oh, quit pussy footing around, Sandy!” Liz growled. “Tom, the week after you left town, a little old lady drove through a red light and banged up the car Linda got from you in a trade for some mules or something. It wasn’t totalled or anything, but it was bent up and it cost her some money to get it fixed. Then just a few weeks after that she was out with some friends and two of them got separated from their friends, but they were given drinks that had been spiked with one of the date rape drugs.
“Whatever drug they used didn’t wipe out Linda’s memory like some of those drugs do, though. She remembered being raped, and she remembered the rapist’s faces, so she called the cops as soon as she could, and they took her and her buddy straight to the hospital. Not only did the hospital get the rapists’ DNA from their semen, but Linda had scratched two of the bastards, one with her left hand and another with her right, and she remembered where she scratched them. That meant the cops even had the skin cells and minor wounds to identify the two ringleaders of the gang. As a result, the cops charged the five guys who did it within twenty-four hours.
“But when their case went to court, it turned out that the arresting officers had made an error in procedure during the arrest of one of the ringleaders, so he got off on a technicality! Even worse than that, he showed up here in the restaurant last week, and he not only recognised Linda but he pointed his finger at her while making motions as if he was shooting a pistol. The poor kid is terrified to be out in public, let alone come to work, but her boss doesn’t want to let her take any time off.”
“I suppose that’s when you made her a job offer, is it?” Tom asked Sandy.
“Yes, it is,” Sandy snapped. “And I think you’d have done the same thing.”
“Probably, but that proves that I’m not the only one who goes out of their way to help someone in trouble,” Tom grinned. “Now, since Art got fired today and since he and Josie are coming over to the motel to talk to us this evening, I think we should invite Linda as well, don’t you? That way, we can see if Josie and Linda strike sparks or if they can get along.”
Just then, a tall, dark-skinned woman walked in the door, glanced around, and waved to Alvin, who came to his feet and pulled back the chair next to him almost instantly. Arnie, who had been sitting on the other side of the empty seat, stood as well, then both of the men received individual hugs before the tall, curvaceous woman turned toward the rest of the group. Then Alvin held her chair as he introduced her to Tom.
“Tom Dunn, I’d like you to meet Sami Martin, the former US Marine lieutenant I was telling you about before. She’s a graduate civil engineer who was in the Seabees over in Afghanistan when she was injured. Arnie and I were on the extraction team that hauled her out of the firefight because we happened to be the closest Allied unit. Once we saw that we had injuries, we called in an evac. chopper. Liz, I’m not sure you remember, but you were on that chopper, so you were the first medic on the scene, and Sami probably owes you her life.”
“Just doing my job,” Liz waved it off with a grin. “Hi ho, Sami, glad you made it out.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Tom stood and reached across the table to shake Sam’s hand. “Here I was expecting a burly man whose name had been shortened from Samuel to Sammy,” he grinned and winked. “Instead, I see that the ‘A’ team has dug up a gorgeous woman whose name was probably something like Samantha, so it was shortened to Sami. Now they tell me you’re another wounded warrior as well, but also a former US citizen, and I have to ask, why move to Canada?”
“Because I think Bush number two is an ass, and he’s being advised by idiots. We had no real reason to go into Iran, and we have no real reason to stay in Afghanistan,” Sami snapped. “Not only that, but the people that the Democrats are pushing to run for President will be about as effective as wet toilet paper. Then, on top of everything else, the US banking system is being run by crooks, and the whole country is up to its eyebrows in debt to the Chinese. Need I go on?”
“Nope, have a seat and once you’ve met the others here, you can tell me about yourself and try to convince me why I should hire you,” Tom smiled as he sat back down. “By the way, the lady on my right is Sandy, my fiancée, and don’t get between her and the outhouse when she has to take a leak. A bull moose tried that and he died. You’ve met the lady on my left. Liz is a chopper pilot as well as a medic. The guy next to her is her husband, Russ, another chopper pilot who works for me.”
“And you are?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m just Tom Dunn. I piddle around at this and diddle around at that, but right now I’m spinning my wheels because a gang of thugs is looking for me and I’ve been convinced to hide out for a few days. I understand there was a price on my head at one point, but a few cops put a stop to that by arresting gang members and a judge confiscated their boss’s funds. By now I think the gang might have realized that they barked up the wrong tree.”
“I think the two guys that you put in the hospital might be the first ones to tell the others that,” Russ snorted. “Sami, you should know that Tom was in the hospital after a guy shot at him and gave him a concussion. The next day a different guy attacked him with a knife, so Tom got out of his hospital bed, took the guy’s knife away, busted his jaw and knocked him out. Then he heard a noise down the hall and investigated, but ran into a guy with a pistol. The rumour going around town is that he took the second guy’s pistol away from him and threw it to a sharpshooter, who took out a third guy that had been covering everyone with an Uzi. Meanwhile Tom was busy dislocating the second guy’s shoulder, as well as busting his jaw and knocking him out. Not only was Tom supposed to be restricted to bed with a concussion, but he was bare-handed the whole time.”
“Russ, you’re the sort of guy who goes fishing, catches a minnow, then loses his fishing rod in the river, but tells his wife that he hooked a fish that was so big it tore the rod out of his hands,” Tom said as he rolled his eyes, then turned to Sandy. “I wonder what happened to our waitress, Linda? Do you think she quit?”
“She might have, she was quite upset about working here and I did offer her a better job,” Sandy said softly as she got out of her seat. “Excuse me while I go check on her.”
“So Sami, while Sandy is hunting us up a waitress, why don’t you tell me about yourself and why I should hire you?” Tom smiled.
“Well, as you can see I was born to an Afro-American family who were sharecroppers up in the hills of Tennessee. I joined the Marine Cadets as a kid and managed to get an education as a civil engineer in college, then joined the Seabees since the Marines had paid for my education. I ended up in Iran, then Afghanistan, which is where I was injured. I can design a road or run the machines to build it. I can do the same thing for a house, a barn, or an aircraft hangar. If you want something built, I can probably design and build it.”
“Okay, I’ll throw you a problem to consider. My brother and I are moving an airfield more than a hundred miles, everything from planes and choppers to buildings. Are you qualified to work as a civil engineer in Canada, or will that be a problem?”
“I thought these two guys said we’d be working up at a mining lease in the mountains?”
“They probably will be up there come summer, and if I hire you, you might be working up there as well. However, I need a civil engineer in Bear Creek to plan and build a new airfield right now. We have to move our operation to that new airfield by the first of July, but the business has to remain operational while we’re moving. If you want the quick and dirty truth of the matter, our old airstrip was bought out from under us by a pair of shysters, so my brother and I bought a less developed airstrip in a much better location. Right now the design work is being planned by the people who will be working the place, but having an engineer who knew how to do the job properly would be a definite advantage.”
“That sounds to me damn near like a military bugout,” Sami frowned.
“Yep, the logistics of it are almost identical,” Tom nodded. “Not only that, but most of the buildings are ex-military and fully portable. Come to think of it, you’ll probably feel thoroughly familiar with a lot of the mobile equipment too because most of the choppers are ex-military. The people you’ll be working with are mostly bush pilots and rescue operators, well except for my brother who is the co-owner of the new site. He used to run the supply side of the family business, but he also designed and built access roads, base camps, or other things of that sort for oil exploration up north in the bush country. He understands the ins and outs of moving industrial equipment, from place to place, but like me, he’s a bit weak on the design end of the move. I’ll tell you what, why don’t I call him?” Tom glanced at his watch, then hauled out his cellphone and called JJ.
“JJ, I’ve got someone I’d like you to talk to who might help out on the design of the airfield, a former Seabee and a civil engineer.”
“Jeez Bro, that sounds great. Are you thinking of hiring him?” JJ answered.
“Well, perhaps, but I thought you might want to be involved in the interview. Oh, by the way, it’s her, not him,” Tom grinned and winked at Sami.
“A Yankee and a woman too, would she know her way around Canadian building codes or our other rules and regulations?”
“JJ, she’s a Southerner and she looks like she’s in good shape, so if you call her a Yankee, she might just pick you up and throw you in the lake,” Tom winked at Sami again, because he’d noticed the slight frown cross her face. “As for the rules and regulations, she can familiarize herself with those in a hurry, just like you’re doing. Remember, she’s a former Seabee, which stands for ‘construction battalion’ and she has a college education in civil engineering, so I’d say she probably knows her stuff. Now do you want to talk to Sami or not?”
“I could, but you’re there. You know better than I do if she’ll fit in or not. We’re still hassling over the layout and the new building that Jim and Harry want for handling the supplies. Ask her if she knows anything about shipping and warehousing arrangements, would you? Jim seems to think that may be a major hassle in the future.”
“Well, I’ve already hired a guy to set up my warehouse in town and he can help to plan a setup for handling freight and supplies out at the airfield. He’ll be there inside of two weeks at the most.”
“Now you’re talking turkey. Like usual, you’re one step ahead of everyone else. Now, I’ve gotta run, I’ve got a date and I don’t want to keep the lady waiting.”
“Okay, bro. Call me later, or perhaps tomorrow morning might be better since you’ve got a heavy date tonight,” Tom smiled as he closed the cellphone. “Just so everyone knows, JJ is older than me and lost his wife a couple of years ago, so hearing that he’s going out on a date is very good news. Now back to the problem at hand.
“Sami, I’ll give you a chance to prove to me that you can hack it here in Canada. You’ll be working for me, just like the ‘A’ team, but you’ll be on loan to White Out for now while you do up the plans for the airstrip at Bear Creek. Then I may have you do a set of plans for an airstrip and freight transfer facility at Misery Flats, or rather just down the road at Lonesome Lake, which will be a somewhat similar setup, but a lot smaller and simpler than Bear Creek. Those two jobs will probably keep you busy for at least a month and might take longer, but after that you’ll move on to my lease and be working there, okay?”
“I suppose so, but I was hoping to work with Alvin and Arnie.”
“Oh, you will be, but not every day,” Tom snorted. “Your initial task will likely be helping to design the layout and facilities for two airstrips, but as well as that, I may be shifting you to several other sites so I can pick your brains on various other projects. You’ll probably be involved with the design of roads, docks, bridges, dams, buildings, and whatever else I need to have planned and built. When you’re doing the designs or supervising the construction of any project, you’ll be paid as an engineer. If you’re working as an equipment operator or some other job, you’ll be paid at the going rate for the work you’re doing. Now, when you’re out on the lease and working with the ‘A’ team on their cabin, or prospecting for gold, you’ll be either on maintenance wages or perhaps not paid at all, depending on who the job is for. When you’re working for me, you get paid, but I don’t pay people to do their own thing for their own benefit. In other words, I don’t sponsor rabbits, and I won’t go along with double-dipping, but I’ll do my best to be fair.”
“Well, I knew I wasn’t in the Marines any longer, but you sound fair to me, so Mr. Dunn, you’ve hired yourself an engineer who happens to be a former Seabee and can handle damn near any job going,” she held out her hand toward Tom, and they shook on the deal.
“Just keep it to Tom, please. If you call me Mr. Dunn, I’ll be looking over my shoulder to see if my dad is standing behind me.” Tom grinned and winked at her.
“Just treat him the way you would a captain of a ship, and you’ll be fine,” Arnie chuckled. “Well, a very friendly captain, one who will back you to the hilt if necessary, but Tom doesn’t like to waste a lot of time polishing doorknobs.”
Just then, Sandy and Linda came back, along with another waitress. Sandy and Linda both sat at the table, and the other waitress took everyone’s order. It took several moments for things to settle down after that, almost as if they didn’t know how to include Linda in the conversation, but then Tom started to describe Bear Creek and the area nearby. When Sandy joined in and added her comments to his, the conversation did pick up, but actually, talk was somewhat subdued during the whole meal. Later, once Sandy and Tom were in the car with Russ and Liz and headed for the motel, she described the scene she’d run into when she went looking for Linda, but her comments started with a question.
“Tom, do you own stock in the parent company that leases the franchise to that restaurant?” she asked.
“I rather doubt it, but why are you asking?”
“Because the manager of that place is an asshole and a chauvinist as well. I overheard him browbeating Linda and telling her that being raped was no excuse for the way she was acting, that she should suck it up and get on with her life,” Sandy snapped. “Now I agree that she needs to get her act together, but she doesn’t need some asshole berating her and forcing her into a situation she doesn’t feel comfortable about. I mean, she should never have taken that job in the first place, but he had no right to chew her out for being frightened of someone who had attacked her in the past.”
“Well, since she’s quit, I doubt if there’s much we can do about the situation.”
“Oh, she didn’t quit; she was fired.”
“Then she should talk to Frank Jamison and perhaps the labour board, but I’m not sure how far that would go. I can introduce her to Frank, but I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for her right now,” Tom sighed. “By the way, did you get her contact information?”
“Yeah, but she’s dropping over to see us tonight anyway. I hope you don’t mind, but she’s planning on bringing the baby along in order to give her mom and dad a break. She said she could be there by eight.”
“Great, because Art and Josie will be over about eight-thirty, so they’ll be able to meet her.”
“Well, Liz and I are thinking of going over to visit with Alvin and Arnie, so we won’t be underfoot and interfering with the discussion,” Russ added.
“Actually, we were thinking of moving in with them now that your folks are gone, then you guys will have the suite to yourselves,” Liz joined in.
“Moving in with them seems a bit drastic, since we don’t feel that you’re interfering with our lives,” Sandy argued. “Besides, we’ll be heading back to Bear Creek tomorrow or the day after.”
“Well, you may not feel like we’re underfoot, but I do.”
“Liz, if you guys would feel more comfortable staying with those guys, I don’t mind at all. If you do it, you might mention it to the manager of the motel though, since it might be something he needs to note on his books,” Tom said quietly, then grinned. “Somehow I had the impression that Sami might be visiting them tonight, so they might have plans for that second bedroom.”
“No, I don’t think things have developed all that far yet,” Liz giggled. “Besides, from the way Sami was talking, she wants a twofer, so they’d still only need one bedroom and one bed.”
“TMI!” Tom snorted. “That’s something I don’t need to know, especially not as their boss.”
“Yeah, but you’re more of a friend than a boss, at least as far as we’re concerned,” Russ said instantly. “You have to be the most reasonable boss I’ve ever heard of, let alone worked for. You take better care of your workers than we do ourselves.”
“Hey, one thing I learned from my grandfather was that a happy worker is usually a good worker. I like to think I give a fair wage for a fair day’s work. If that includes thinking of my workers’ needs in advance, so be it. It’s just part of my job.”
“Okay, then we’re moving because we’ll feel more comfortable, okay, Boss?” Liz giggled again. “That way, if Sami does come over for a visit, I can listen in and not feel guilty about it.”
“TMI again, kid,” Tom chortled. “Russ, did you know that I’m now forced to suspect that your wife is a closet voyeur? That’s definitely something a boss doesn’t need to know.”
“You already know what I have to say about that, Tom,” Russ laughed aloud.
Tom was pulling into the motel by that time, and their mood was much better than it had been when they left the restaurant. Even Sandy was smiling again. As soon as they were parked, Russ went to talk to the manager, who told him he didn’t care who slept where as long as they didn’t exceed the number of people the suites allowed. So he and Liz shifted their suitcases over to the other suite, leaving Tom and Sandy alone for the time being.
“What was that all about?” Tom asked Sandy.
“I haven’t a clue, but I did notice that they seemed quite uncomfortable about staying with us from the time we moved in here. I suppose that’s a leftover from the military where the officers and the enlisted men didn’t fraternise,” Sandy shrugged. “No matter what Russ said, I notice they do treat you like you’re something special, but I think you’ve noticed that as well.”